RVA Steampunk Maker Day

The Richmond Steampunk Society is glad to announce the first RVA Steampunk Maker Day! On October 15th, 2016, with the help of one of it’s members (thanks Jaime) we have secured one of the meeting rooms at the nearby Chesterfield County Central Library. I originally was just planning to hold a smaller maker day at the home of one of our members, so I could teach people my techniques for using Rub N Buff to create Steampunk’d guns and goggles, but it turns out that there weren’t many members with the room and table space we needed. So I decided to make the event a bit bigger than that. This event is open to the public and we’ll have a lot of tables available for Steampunk makers of all types (except welding and grinding of metal). I will still be teaching Rub N Buff techniques as well as explaining the plans for my latest “Big” NERF gun conversion project in celebration of the 30 year anniversary of the coining of the term “Steampunk”.

The Chesterfield Public Library is the perfect venue for this event, as it has a long history of supporting various Maker activities. It holds its own annual maker fest, and has its own “Maker Spaces” for kids and adults, and hosts a Battlebots type robotics club for teenagers. The person in charge of this part of the library’s programming is a cosplayer himself and rocks a kickass “Mad Max” outfit.

This library is also a friend of the comic and cosplay community as it also hosts its own annual Comic Con, which is comparatively small, but has a huge turnout of Cosplayers from around the area.

I hope to see many steampunk makers at the first RVA Steampunk Maker Day, working on their various projects and teaching and learning from each other. If you aren’t a maker yourself, feel free to come to see how things can be created to supplement your steampunk attire.

And those of you with your own Steampunk airship or other type of steampunk group, remember to seek out your local library as a meeting place for maker days or other activities. I know that not all Libraries are as open to such things (cough, cough, Richmond Public Library, cough cough), but many of them are.